


shadow of the day

by PurpleLex



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Dinah goes through a lot of shit, Dreams and Nightmares, During Canon, Gen, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Recovery, because she's amazing., but she puts herself back together again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 11:23:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12886827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleLex/pseuds/PurpleLex
Summary: [ a through-canon exploration of Dinah dealing with grief, nightmares, and murder ]The desert air chokes her, panic sweeping down her spine. Fight or flight."You sure this is him?" The medical examiner had asked, crouched next to the open grave in the early hours of dusk.Mangled, mutilated, and bloated, the corpse is a grotesque caricature of the man, all signs pointing to intentionally stripping away identification. But she knew. They'd have to wait on the DNA, run any fingerprints still salvageable, but she just knew. Bile scorched the back of her throat when she managed a curt nod.





	shadow of the day

**Author's Note:**

> (This was written to Shadow of the Day by Echo, hence the name!) Thanks a ton to everyone on tumblr for the encouragement to write this and the wonderful @frankcastle for reading it first ^^ This morphed A LOT from the original idea but hopefully it’s for the better? I’m still nervous af about posting it but it feels complete, so. Here it is~

 

 

_Don't get emotional._

Rafi wasn't the only one to drill that into her, to impress upon it over and over as a means of survival through the predictable tragedy of a career around war, but he'd been the first. And Dinah had set her spine with it as soon as she'd set her sights on Kandahar. Three little words -- a mantra in a distorted tone of his that echoes harshly through her skull now, mocking the sting in her eyes, cold sweat at the nape of her neck.

As she knocks on the door, the accompanying soldier next to her shifts on his feet ever-slightly, and for a moment, just for a brief flash of a second, she regrets insisting on coming here. On breaking the news herself.

They all knew how this was going to end as soon as he'd been yanked out his house by persons unknown in black masks, she knew as soon as she had higher-ups charging into her office with fabricated evidence of terrorism ties that was all too convincing, but hope was a tricky, poisonous thing. It was the only way of keeping the family on the other side of the wall together. And she was about to destroy that for good.

The desert air chokes her, panic sweeping down her spine. Fight or flight.

"You sure this is him?" The medical examiner had asked, crouched next to the open grave in the early hours of dusk.

Mangled, mutilated, and bloated, the corpse is a grotesque caricature of the man, all signs pointing to intentionally stripping away identification. But she knew. They'd have to wait on the DNA, run any fingerprints still salvageable, but she just knew. Bile scorched the back of her throat when she managed a curt nod.

The door swings open and snaps her to attention, Ahmad's wife stepping into view.

"Dinah! I've had trouble calling--" Her eyes snap to the stranger, back again. The lines of fear across her forehead deepen into grief. "No. Tell me he's alive, tell me you found him, please."

_Don't get emotional._

Straightening her spine, she pastes on a wisp of the bitterly sympathetic smile she's gotten good at bearing, hopes the wobble she feels at the edges can't be seen. She's never been one to flee, and she won't start now.

"We found his body, just a few hours ago... _.I'm sorry._ "

 

* * *

 

They shut her down. The formal investigation, the informal digging beyond limitations, further contact with Zubair's family. They shut it all down.

His ghost haunts her anyway.

If she was an ounce devoutly religious, Dinah might think it really is him. Face fading night by night, the nightmares settle before she knows it into renditions of the same scenes. Darkness enveloping, dirt and sand collapsing beneath her feet, clawing tendrils wrapping her sides, smothering her as Ahmad calls out from somewhere achingly far away. Some nights, she almost wishes it was him.

Almost welcomes the blame.

But it's not hers to carry. Not for a moment. She knows this, too.

They'll bench her for good if they discover any of this, though -- the diminishing hours of sleep, the increasing paranoia, the obsessive one-track fixation shutting down everything else in her life outside of her job. If her mother could see her, she'd want to prescribe something, want her to participate in therapy.

She learns to adapt. Recites those three words in her head, convincing herself that she's fine. She's fixing herself with extra concealer for the bags underneath her eyes, book of poetry she doesn't even like on the bedside table for the middle of the night, cheap box wine always in stock. After every new case they throw her way, after every resolution, she presses on about Zubair once more. He wasn't a terrorist and she can prove it, she just needs more resources.

They never budge.

Accepting the transfer to New York and leaving Kandahar behind shakes his ghost from her back, files secured within her luggage. A new opening. A new chance. And yet the emptiness of the darkness remains, drowning her anew. It should bother her, she's more than self-aware enough to see that, but she'd never been much of a dreamer to start, disbelieving of those that ever spoke of finding wild fantasies in their sleep.

Dinah welcomes the all-consuming stillness every night like an old friend and tells her mother she's doing perfectly fine.

 

* * *

 

"So just what exactly did you do to piss off Wolf?"

They're in the corner of a take-out Indian joint a block from the office, waiting without any rush as she trusts in Sam's recommendation. The spices drift pleasantly through the air. She realizes it's her first hot meal since the night she arrived in the city, her mother insisting on taking care of her right then. Sandwiches, salads, snacks -- that's what she'd grown used to, and they were easier. Simpler.

He raises his eyebrows, smirks. Dinah rolls her eyes. "What? If I remember right, and I always do, your exact words were _'you gotta earn my trust first'_."

"That's an interpretation of me? Really? With that twang?"

"Oh, it's absolutely there. Just a touch," she teases, gesturing a shrug with one of her hands, and then he's scoffing, scrunching up his face just so to prompt a light laugh from her lungs. It's all too easy to get caught in the moments of banter with him. To relax.

She can't pinpoint exactly why, either, though Dinah doesn't try for long to do so. In fleeting sensations, it reminds her of Ahmad, of finding one person to call friend in the midst of a revolving door of colleagues, in the midst of political climbing and death. The familiarity was close and yet foreign. Something wholly different.

She decides it's rather nice.

"Come on. Isn't that what we're doing? I've shared everything I know, what I'm after....I'm trusting you, _partner_."

For a moment, they lock stares, and she can pinpoint the second another kind of light clicks on behind his eyes. Catches the way his shoulders sink lower than before when he sighs and leans against the table, the comfortable half-smile that sets at the corner of his mouth and doesn't leave the rest of the night.

At some point, she starts mirroring it with one of her own.

The nightmares fade just a touch.

 

* * *

 

"I'm not _lonely_ ," she tells Russo when she still believes it most of the time. When she has to.

He's a fascinating enigma of warm eyes and blunt words, a dangerous man that knows exactly how much he can charm with his pretty face and alluring smile, that looks at her like a challenging code to crack. Dinah lets him try. Let's him think he's won, too, as his hands slide over her and his teeth tug at her lip, but one glimpse of the mosaic of purple and blue bruising across her abdomen has him worried, has him submitting.

She expected nothing less.

In every second, in every touch, she knows she holds the tether of control between them. And in every second, she's aware of it. Aware the moment it starts to fray as he's picking up Castle's file, mixture of anger and hurt seeping through on his face, his words. She deflects using him -- for digging into Castle, for casual sex without a future. The only calm answer that isn't a lie.

When Russo pulls away from her, crumples into himself, she keeps her chin up and mask on. Regret pings along her skin.

"Gotta go to work," she says.

As soon as the door closes, Dinah feels the thread of control disintegrate between them. Worthless in the wake of betrayal. There's a question there underneath it all, low and persistent, thrumming against the back of her skull, asking after what she cares for more -- the loss of him with her, or the loss of him for her case? It doesn't take long to find the answer.

The truth doesn't make her a bad person -- it just isn't very flattering, either.

She hates playing bad odds, hates leaps of faith, but she takes a chance on trusting him out of necessity. Uses him openly and honestly. She takes a chance and ignores the grim lack of confidence along her spine.

 

* * *

 

She can't breathe.

Sam's the one gurgling out on the gravel, hand hopelessly locked around his carved-out throat to delay the inevitable, but it requires all her might to lock her legs and not fall down as soon as she catches sight of him, consumes all her blurry focus to manage lifting the radio and gasping out the words. "Federal agent down."

It echoes through her, mocks her.

_Federal agent down._

_Don't get emotional._

_Federal agent down._

She stumbles at the side of Ahmad's grave, can feel the dirt sliding underneath her soles as it rushes over the edge into the pit. The stench wafts up from memory, makes her half-spin away from Sam and nearly slide on the limestone chips, wild eyes scanning. Whichever bastard that did this is gone, shipyard still. Eerily akin to a graveyard.

Except graveyards don't hold the dying men as well.

_Federal agent down._

In a blink, she's rushing to his side, falling to her knees now and yanking off her jacket. His eyes are bulging and she sees Ahmad again, eyelids half-closed and clouded irises staring out blankly, but then Sam gurgles in another attempt to live and the comparison washes away. She presses cloth to artery and begs him stay. Lies that he can, that he will.

She splinters apart cradling his head, hair matted in a pool of blood as he imprints it in excess across her face, the last of his strength spent cupping her jaw before darkness exhausts his stare. Sobs wrack her frame. She gives up trying to breathe, gives in to the blame. Welcomes it.

It's no one else's burden to carry but her own.

Grief cocoons her, overwhelms her, and this time, when shock threatens to take over, she doesn't fight it.

_Don't get emotional._

She flees, awash in red.

 

* * *

 

The nightmares return full of color and baring teeth.

Ahmad's widow, pushing and screaming with strong hands and vicious words as she can't help stepping forward through the door every time they cast her out, trying again and again to right the wrong, to explain and fix it. Sam, smiling unperturbed with a slashed throat no matter how much she tries to stop it, to save him, helpless as he takes the choice from her and turns away. They all disintegrate into smoke and shadows before she's falling into nothingness.

Waking up is a relief of shuttered inhales and the soft confines of her parents' guest bedroom. She flicks on the lamp next to her. Blindingly bright, the light illuminates the room in stark reality, chasing away the demons in her head. Guilt tears through her.

_Tomorrow_.

She'll climb out of bed and put herself back together tomorrow, she vows, and snaps off the light.

That tomorrow doesn't come until several days later when Sam's funeral looms. But, finally, she manages. She always does.

 

* * *

 

_Anvil_. All four men, all four killers, all four backgrounds the same.

_Don't get emotional._

She doesn't tell Rafi as she keeps it to herself and follows her instincts to the hotel lobby. He's that same enigma of threatening charm, but she catches him slipping -- cold sparkle in his eye, gestures turned jittery and over-enthusiastic, quick defensive turn in the shifting of blame. Blearily, she recoils from his touch and searches for the truth. Searches for the real Russo behind the mask.

And she thinks that maybe, just maybe, she finds him hidden in a snake's skin as he holds his chin up and talks about putting down his old friend like a dog.

Irises black, face pulled taut. He's no pretty face anymore as he blends with the darkness settled behind her eyelids.

20 minutes later and blood sprays, Castle tumbling down the stairs and slamming into the wall, shot echoing through the stairwell. Sam's gurgling in her ear of the last time she saw red, she rounds the banister to find the source above. There's a distinct lack of surprise at Russo standing on the end of the gun as she yells at him. Almost like a part of her expected it.

Expected the worst of him.

He trains his own weapon back on her, tries to talk her out of hers with excuses. Her finger itches to cradle the trigger.

With the frustrated heat of shame, realization crashes down, ghostly sensations of blood sticking across her skin, drenching her as she stares at the monster she'd let her clean up. Let take care of her. She'd given him the control then, fallen into his trap as he took it, as he stole and twisted up her life that day. How could she have been so blind?

"You killed Stein."

_Don't get emotional._

Shame explodes into anger, finger dropping to cool metal, and she's damn sure she could do it, could fire the shot and rob the bastard of his life and not feel a drop of guilt about it -- but then the doors burst open, and the choice one way or another is out of her hands.

Dinah lowers the gun with a bit-back scream.

 

* * *

 

She takes another chance on trust, more guarded this time with confidence snapping her spine straight as she makes a deal with Castle, with Micro. A sting -- after she gets what she wants. Details, confessions, the truth. She waits to hear Russo's name, eager for it.

"I did it."

Her mouth goes dry, words lost, and Castle's gaze flicks away as her lowers. Relief should come next, that bittersweet satisfaction at puzzle pieces clicking into place, complete knowledge obtained that no one can hide from her again, but it doesn't. It never comes.

Not all evil deeds are committed by evil men.

Dinah escapes the room a minute later for a glass of water, to take a beat of a breath before she screams or cries or breaks something, she doesn't know. Doesn't know about a lot these days.

"You went to Afghanistan because it was a fast-track to promotion. _'A notch on your belt'_ was the phrase you used," her mother reminded not too long ago, and it haunts her now, trying to remember the person she was. The ambition for the sake of power and status alone before all the waters became so muddled. Before she kept defying orders for the sake of doing the right thing.

She defied hers. Castle followed his. In the world of structure, she had been in the wrong, but in the world of the moral, it was him. _Damned_ , he'd said. Resentfully, she can understand that, too. Understands the fucked up disconnects in the system she's both fighting to use, to change, and yet protect. It feels like a betrayal.

To Zubair. To herself.

"Do you, um. Do you have a dollar? Just-- just to borrow." Dinah looks up. Nerve-wracked and antsy, Leo Lieberman waits at a table in the staff kitchen with poise beyond her years. The girl nods to the vending machine.

"Yeah." She fishes a bill out of her pocket, assess the display of entirely unhealthy sugar and oil. "What do you want?"

"Uh, Snickers."

A soft smile rises unexpectedly. "Good choice."

 

* * *

 

They use her too, at first, but then they cave. Micro caves.

It's not a win, can't be -- Rawlins is dead, Russo's on the run with only a bullet in the arm, and all she has is the man that pulled the trigger on her first partner bleeding out and dying on the floor after his own brutal torture, something she once thought might've been a fitting flip of karma to see in her darker moods. It only pains her now.

She watches Micro hold onto Castle, beg him to live. Her breath catches in her throat, lungs stuttering still a minute as she sees herself, sees Sam -- but then he opens his eyes. Fights to live, again. With a harsh exhale and uncomfortable thrum across her nerves, she looks around.

Micro was right about the hospital. They take him into the open and the case is out of her hands, it goes to her superiors. They take in Castle, at best bury the actions of Rawlins and at worst draw him as a martyr, string up more charges and blame on the man they have than is owed and never acknowledge Kandahar, Cerberus, or Anvil to the public. They wouldn't have to.

It'd only make everyone look bad, after all.

Self-preservation at its finest.

Dinah recalls the first conversation she held with Page, the legal assistant-turned-investigative journalist that saw far more than she'd been willing to at the time as she tried to place everything in the world, everything around her, into two boxes. Right and wrong. But sometimes the right didn't coincide with the law. Sometimes there was no satisfaction to be had.

She re-holsters her pistol and helps Micro grab Castle by the shoulders. She caves.

 

* * *

 

"What about _Russo_?" She asks, strangling out the words with a dry throat.

There's purple bags underneath her eyes she doesn't care about, every fiber of her being aches dully with the sensation of being drained of life, and her skull throbs as though it might burst at any moment. But the morphine's swimming heavily within her veins and she keeps a wince at bay when she turns to look at Rafi.

He stops talking about Castle, stops asking her about the tracker and the non-existent call for back up. He tilts his head and reassesses her. She knows what he sees. Why she was really there, the showdown she knew could only come from a closed carousel in Central Park, another choice of do or don't taken from her.

Dinah doesn't back down.

"In a coma."

Not dead then.

After a moment, she remembers to react, gives one slight nod. Anger and relief swirl together in equal parts to form a toxic mess inside her head. The bastard deserved to face his own mortality, his own judgment from a reaper instead of the courts, and she knows that doesn't make her a bad person, either. It's the cause of the relief that isn't flattering this time around.

It's the cause of that relief which has her hooking up her IV on its mobile pole the day after Castle gets released, day after she secures him his freedom and second chance. The right thing to do.

It has nothing to do with right or wrong though when she flashes her badge to the guard outside the door and shuffles in slowly, stopping between the bedside and numerous machines. She shouldn't be here. Call it conflict of interest, call it being emotional, maybe it was both. She didn't care.

Wrapped in a cast of bandages, Russo's mouth and eyes are only visible through triangular slots, mottled canvas of red and purple underneath, completely unrecognizable. A grim smirk curves her lips.

"No more charming with that _pretty face,_ huh?"

The heart monitor beeps steadily.

Door open, guard just outside at the corner, she rests a hand along the plastic railing anyway. Considers the distance between her fingers and the plugs on the wall. A foot? Two feet? Could she pull them in time, would the momentary loss of life-support be enough to strip him of his?

Was it worth throwing away her own?

_Don't get emotional._

She decides to stop using that little mantra once and for all. Fat lot of good it's done her, anyway.

 

* * *

 

The nightmares mellow once more.

Dinah lays in the darkness, feels it blanket her and echo silence in response, can't hear herself when she shouts into the void. It's almost easy to mistake it for the return of nothingness, when then, inevitably, it morphs slowly into the hallway outside her office. The tiles underneath her legs and the glass at her back are cold. Grounding.

Sam holds the flask over in the space between them, casually, as if they're really back to that day. Before everything well and truly went to shit. He always says something light, something funny, something she can't ever recall after she blinks awake and stares up at the plaster ceiling with un-shed tears, and she always accepts the flask then, too, as she forgets that it's just a dream. It feels too real.

Too calm.

They pass the flask back and forth. Sometimes they talk more, sometimes they don't. Warmth radiates over from where he sits.

It breaks her heart more than the drowning darkness ever did.

 

* * *

 

She returns to Russo's room the day after. And the day after that. Keeps showing up, keeps weighing her choices.

Her hand inches closer.

The day of her release, her mother comes to take her home. Cups her hands around Dinah's face as soon as she steps out of the bathroom, makes her feel like a little girl once more as thumbs pad over the fading marks around her eyes, cheeks hollowed out from exhaustion and pain and healing. "I've been dreaming about Stein," she finally confesses.

Not all the details spill from her lips. Not the nightmares of before, not the ones of nothingness or of Ahmad or his wife. Not the terror, not the blame. It doesn't matter much, though, because her mother raises her eyebrows just so and she recognizes that look.

She doesn't have to share everything. Her mother sees more than enough in the silence.

"Sounds like you're trying to come to peace with it," she responds delicately. "You're allowing yourself to miss him; perhaps this can help you move forward from all this tragedy.... I'm sure he would be proud of what you've achieved."

It's a false platitude, Dinah's aware of that. But it still happens to feel like the truth.

She visits one last time.

The finality of death, the rich equality in that, it's a fate with his name written all over it. She's never been more certain of anything in her life. Leaning over him, she props herself close with a hand on the bed. "You're going to die, Billy. I'm going to make sure of that myself."

A beat passes. She watches closely. Waits for some sort of reaction -- a change in the heart monitor, a twitch across his skin, a steady breath turned into a shudder. Almost begging the universe for him to wake up, she waits.

Nothing happens.

Dinah sighs. "But not today. You're not worth it."

She thinks of Sam -- good and honest, a self-proclaimed optimist. The burden of his death would be firmly on her shoulders until proper justice was delivered, she knows, but it feels lighter now. Feels manageable. She'd bide her time, carry that burden, and do this right. For him.

For herself.

Voice still dragged raw, she drops it to a whisper. "I'll put you down myself -- but not until you can look me in the eye. I want you to see me pull the trigger and realize that everyone you killed, everyone you destroyed, the ways you hurt me? I'm going to pull that trigger...and I'm going to enjoy it," she confesses low, lips an inch from the cast. "And no one is going to think it's anything but _justified_. _I promise_."

Briefly, she thinks she might just spy a twitch behind his eyelids. She waits. It doesn't happen again.

"What?" Her mother asks when she meets her by the elevators, curious concern across her face.

Dinah realizes then that she's smiling.

Hopeful.

"Nothing....Let's get Indian take-out. I know of a good place."


End file.
